


Had we our senses

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, American Civil War, Angst, Doctors & Physicians, F/M, Friendship, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2017-03-29
Packaged: 2018-10-12 18:10:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10496676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: She'd thought it had been a fair bargain when they left Alexandria.





	

“There now, what’s all this?” Dr. Foster asked, though he clearly had some idea as his question was accompanied by his handkerchief in an outstretched hand. It was a fine linen, finely hemmed and embroidered with his monogram, and though Emma wished she might shake her head and watch him return it to his vest pocket, she had exhausted her own smaller square and still she wept. Henry remained unconscious, his breast rising and falling beneath the sheet, and she worried when he would wake. _If_ was a word she couldn’t allow herself, though it beat with her heart.

“I shouldn’t never have agreed, never allowed him to go…what does a chaplain know of War?” she said, her voice thickened with the tears she had shed and those that were too painful to permit. She wiped at her eyes with the new handkerchief and felt how even its delicate weave was rough against her scrubbed face. She felt Dr. Foster lay a hand on her shoulder and was surprised by how gentle he was, how there was no hint of mockery in him. He was a different man these days, a better one she supposed, but she hadn’t paid much mind to any man other than the one who rested before her, the one she’d risked and Foster saved.

“Oh, he’s a fool, that’s certain. You’ll notice he only sought your advice and aid, not anyone who’d tell him no. But I don’t think he’ll pay with his life for his error, Miss Green,” the surgeon said. 

Henry’s error—to think he could rescue the wounded men without sufficient help, that he should turn his attention from the men to her, to her lips, that he could best the armed Rebel who’d come upon them embracing, dizzy with their confessions, the taste of each other, who had shot Henry twice as they struggled. The man had been a coward, running when she screamed and the few men who’d come with them started towards the grove where they had kissed, where Henry lay bleeding. She could barely remember how they’d gotten back to the hospital, the wagon ride where she staunched the wounds with her torn petticoats, Henry’s head cradled in her lap. She’d been heedless of anything but him, unwilling to let him go until she’d heard Jed Foster’s voice in the hall and knew he was the only one who could save Henry.

“You’re sure he’ll live?” she said, hoping to have her question dismissed as nonsense, the Executive Officer’s pride piqued by her inquiry.

“Sure, no. Who can be sure anymore, of anything? But I’m confident the Lord doesn’t want his servant by His side just yet and that Mr. Hopkins has work yet among us, work he cares about very much, debts to pay and though I shouldn’t speak out of turn, dreams. He’s his own dreams he’d like to make reality—and I think we all know now just how far he’s willing to go to achieve them,” Dr. Foster said. So had Dr. Foster, Emma thought, and she imagined his dreams held a woman’s fair face, dark eyes, and the recitation of a poem Nurse Mary had returned to again and again in her delirium. 

“Too far,” she said, thinking of danger and despair, his hand in her hair, at her waist, the sudden gleam of moonlight on a bayonet’s blade, his bloodless lips after his injury, the shadow over them both that nestled beneath his closed eyes during the journey back to Alexandria.

“That’s for him to say, isn’t it? And look, he’s waking now. A little water, only a little to wet his lips, and then he can tell you himself, can’t you, Hopkins? You must explain yourself to Miss Green,” Foster said with a smile for his friend, a quick pat on her shoulder. “I’ll be back to look in on you in an hour but don’t talk the whole time.” The older man had something of the cadence of the Head Nurse in his tone but Emma couldn’t spare another thought for him, for her own ill friend so far away. There was a tin cup to fill and Henry was watching her, waiting.

**Author's Note:**

> I suppose I'm on a roll with the canon divergence-- here I imagine what would have happened if Ayres' Farm had gone another way. The title is from Emily Dickinson.


End file.
